Word: thieu
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SOUTH Viet Nam President Nguyen Van Thieu took no chances on the outcome of this week's one-man presidential election. To ensure that the voting would be undisturbed by demonstrators or the Viet Cong, he ordered soldiers, police and armed recruits of the Popular Self-Defense Force to patrol the streets and shoot to kill if necessary. As voters went to the polls, whole blocks of Saigon were barricaded or strung with barbed wire. Thieu also refrained from setting his sights too high; he declared that an even 50% of the vote would give him sufficient mandate...
...There seemed hardly any chance, barring massive miscalculation, that he could miss so easy a mark. Not only was Thieu unopposed, but he also had sole control of the election machinery, and his poll watchers were the only ones on hand to observe what the officials he had appointed were up to. On top of all that, casting a vote of nonconfidence in Thieu's "Democracy Slate" was not an easy matter. Province chiefs and mayors designated the sites of the polling places, for example; in last month's elections for the Lower House, they located the polls...
...Total Control. Since the law offered no provisions for casting a no vote in a one-way contest, Thieu advised voters that they could mutilate their ballots or put empty envelopes in the ballot box to express their rejection of him. But voters who might want to do as Thieu suggested were required to drop the unused ballot on the floor, an action that could easily be observed-and remembered-by Thieu-appointed officials...
...Unable to force postponement of the election, opposition groups settled instead for a boycott-a rather futile move, since the government could announce almost any turnout that it thought appropriate. Thieu's nearly total control of the situation was evident when the frustrated and factious anti-government forces met last week to try to organize a broadly based opposition. They managed only to form a loose committee and named as its chairman General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, who dropped out of the presidential election last month charging that the vote was rigged in advance. Minh did not even bother...
...Force." A second meeting, called by Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, gathered in downtown Saigon under the name of "The Congress of the People's Force Against Dictatorship." As soldiers armed with M-16s and grenade launchers stationed themselves near by, one after another of the speakers denounced Thieu and the "unconstitutional, undemocratic and illegal election." Ky arrived surrounded by M-16-packing airmen. Said he: "I ask the people not to participate in the election, not to go to the polls, not to accept the results of the election...